What Should I Add To This Recipe

I have an amazing strawberry scratch cake that I would like to try to make a vanilla version. I would think I would need to add something to it but I'm not sure what to add to the recipe in place of the strawberry puree. Milk? Here is the recipe. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

4 large eggs, room temperature

1 1/2 cups (340 g) strawberry puree

1 teaspoon (4 g.) vanilla

2 teaspoons (8 g) strawberry extract

2 to 3 drops AmeriColor Pink or your pink coloring of choice (optional but makes for a prettier shade of pink)

If you wanted a spice cake, I would have tried applesauce in the same amount, omitted strawberry extract. Added a teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg.

Three different ways to try to turn your recipe into a vanilla cake recipe.

I think for a vanilla cake I would omit strawberry extract and strawberry puree. Add an additional 2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract to the teaspoon already in the recipe. Replace the amount of puree omitted with the same amount of a fat free unsweetened Greek yogurt or a vanilla flavoured Greek yogurt. If using the vanilla flavoured yogurt, only use 2 teaspoons total of pure vanilla extract

Or use again a total of 1 tablespoon of pure vanilla extract in place of strawberry extract and replace strawberry puree with fat free sour cream.

But I think you might get the best results by replacing the puree with the same amount of whole milk. I suggest this because I make the Martha Stewart Neapolitan Cake Spring 2006 also on her site. To make the strawberry version she replaces the milk from the vanilla cake recipe with puree. The fat from the milk doesn't have any ill effects on the vanilla version so this may be your best bet. Personally, where milk is called for in a recipe I always use full fat/ whole milk. I find this gives the best results. I would omit the strawberry extract and instead use a total of 1 tablespoon vanilla extract in the recipe. This amount includes the teaspoon already in your strawberry recipe and substitutes the 2 teaspoons of strawberry extract with 2 teaspoons vanilla extract for that total of 1 tablespoon of vanilla. Sounds like loads of vanilla but that is the amount in her recipe.

Actually, I will type the vanilla part of the recipe here. The whole Neapolitan Cake recipe is on her site.

Martha Stewart 2006 White Butter Cakes/ Neapolitan Cake

3 1/4 cups of cake flour (not self rising)

1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons whole milk

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

14 tablespoons (1 3/4 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1 3/4 cup sugar

5 large egg whites

In her strawberry version she simply replaces 1 cup of the milk called for in the recipe with 1 cup strawberry puree.

Thank you...I was asking because I baked the strawberry recipe in the Wilton car pan but over cooked it so the outside was very brown...I measured out all the dry ingredients to re-bake when I decided to use the cake I already baked only trim off the edges...so I didn't want to waste the dry ingredients and I have a vanilla cake I need to bake at the end of the week (if any of that made sense lol)

Your original post asked about substituting to make your strawberry into a vanilla cake. I've tried doing that but it's never as good as you would want. It's better to just find a good vanilla recipe you like. In substituting there are all these things that have to be accounted for - acid, sugar and pulpy goodness in the strawberries. I would use that recipe and try other fruits but if you want vanilla go with a straight up vanilla recipe for the best results. Then there's the issue of which one! Lots of thread on that, gotta just dive in and give them a try :)

Pastrybaglady, in her later post she stated that she already had the dry ingredients measured out in a bowl. But in her first post it sounded like she wanted to experiment with her favourite recipe.

I went through all of my vanilla cake recipes to find something similar to give her a basis to compare to. Then I recalled the Martha Stewart recipe where she uses the same recipe to make a strawberry cake and then switches out the strawberry puree for milk to make the vanilla cake.

But yes, under normal circumstances that is what I would do - find a good recipe for a vanilla cake. But sometimes people like to stick with a recipe they know and make adjustments.

My apologies to you and anyone else if you feel that I am just playing "unawares" with recipes and throwing out bad information. I do understand the science of baking and I spent a lot of time researching my recipes and typing out the recipe to show my basis for considering it.

Now that we know why she wants to stick with her recipe with adjustments because the dry ingredients are already measured out, I think the switching out of the berries for the milk might be her best bet. I weighed carefully the fact that both recipes used baking powder and that neither had baking soda. They have similar amounts of fat when you consider that Martha's has more actual fat but since she doesn't use the fat containing egg yolks, it makes the fat content similar.

Hi everyone...thanks for your responses...after doing a little more research, I actually found a yellow cake recipe from the same author that used very similar ingredient amounts...the dry ingredients I had measured were for a 1.5 recipe and the vanilla cake I'm making this weekend needs a double recipe so I added in the extra amount of dry ingredients to adjust and match the yellow cake recipe...normally I don't try a new recipe for a big cake, but it's for my dufhter's 3rd bday so she won't mind. Plus, the success of the strawberry cake makes me hopeful that this one will work well. PS- she does use milk as the liquid in the yellow cake recipe so SquirrelluCakes' substitution suggestions probably would've worked.

SquirellyCakes no need for apologies! I was just throwing in my two cents and bad experience with substituting. I was not meaning to undermine your post! Just my thoughts on the original post. There was another thread a while ago where there was a similar situation and there was a lot of back and forth about acid verses fat and the need for baking soda over baking powder yada yada yada... it got very complicated, but the ingredients had not been already measured as in this case. It's a great idea to find a recipe that is very similar. Let us know how it comes out!

I didn't see that other thread but I can imagine how complicated it was getting. Sounds a bit like changing a chocolate cake recipe because you have alkalized cocoa versus natural and someone wanting to switch out olive oil for butter and couldn't we just use egg whites no yolks and I want to use sweetened condensed milk instead of milk and...before you know it you have the recipe from hell. Would have been simpler to use another recipe, haha!